A manufacturer of Chinese herbal healthcare products is under investigation after a debate about its hand in the death of a seven-year-old cancer patient were reignited in China this week.
Quanjian Group, a company founded in the northeastern port city of Tianjin in 2004, is being investigated by the local government for false marketing practices after one of China’s leading health publications accused it of making bogus claims about its herbal cancer treatments.
On Tuesday, the website DinXiang Doctor linked the company to the 2015 death of seven-year-old Inner Mongolian girl Zhou Yang.
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Yang, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2013 at the age of four, had undergone several operations and painful chemotherapy treatments when her uncle first appeared on television to appeal for more research and better treatment for China’s cancer patients.
The uncle said he was subsequently contacted by a representative for Quanjian, who arranged for the family to visit their headquarters in Tianjin to learn about their “secret” cancer treatments.
A week later, Yang’s father Zhou Erli, who worked as a farmer in Inner Mongolia, removed the girl from her treatment at Beijing Children’s Hospital and started her on Quanjian’s anti-cancer drink.
Three months later in March 2013, the girl’s cancer was found to have spread, so her father sent her back to the Beijing hospital to re-start chemotherapy.
That May, Zhou found Quanjian had released adverts online falsely claiming their treatment had cured his daughter.
In early 2015 he filed a lawsuit against the company at his local court in the northern autonomous region, but it was ruled he did not have enough evidence to prove the company had misled in their marketing materials and made false claims about his daughter.
By the end of the year, Yang was dead.
After the DinXiang Doctor article went viral this week, Quanjian issued a statement on Twitter claiming the website had “gathered untrue information from the internet and has slandered Quanjian, violated Quanjian’s legal rights and led the public to misunderstand the company.”
DinXiang Doctor responded, saying it stands by every word of its account.